Iambic trimeter

The iambic trimeter was imitated in Latin by 2nd century BC comic playwrights such as Plautus and Terence, where it is known as the iambic senarius. It is the most commonly used meter in their plays, especially in Terence, and it is the only meter which was used purely for dialogue without musical accompaniment. It was the preferred meter of the Roman fabulist Phaedrus in the first century AD. In Latin the basic meter was as follows:

| x – x – | x – x – | x – u – |

That is to say, the third and seventh elements, which were always short in Greek tragedy (but not in Greek comedy), were anceps (either long or short) in Latin; in fact they are long 60% of the time, while the Greek anceps syllables (the first, fifth, and ninth elements) are long in 80–90% of lines.^[2] As in the Greek trimeter, any long or anceps syllable except the last could be replaced with a double short syllable (u u). As in Greek, there was usually (though not always) a caesura (word-break) after the fifth element.

An example of a Latin iambic senarius (from the prologue to Plautus' Aulularia) is the following:

nē quís mīrétur quí sim, paúcīs éloquár.

| – – – – | – – – – | – – u – |

"In case anyone should wonder who I am, let me explain in a few words."

A difference between Latin and Greek iambics was that the Latin senarius was partly accentual, that is to say the words were arranged in such a way that very often (especially in the first half of the verse), the word accents coincided with the strong points of the line, that is the 2nd, 4th, 6th etc. elements of the verse. Thus even in lines where nearly all the syllables were long as in the above verse, it is possible to feel the iambic rhythm of the line.

Any long or anceps element except the last could be resolved into two short syllables, giving rise to lines like the following (the resolved elements are underlined):

nunc hódi(e) Amphítruō véniēt húc ab ěxércitú

| – uu – uu | – uu – – | uu – u – |

"Right now today Amphitryon will come here from the army"

The above line also illustrates another feature found in Plautus and Terence, namely iambic shortening or brevis breviāns, where the syllables ab ex- are scanned as two short syllables. The long ē in veniēt is another Plautine feature.

In English and similar accentual-syllabic metrical systems, a line of iambic trimeter consists of three iambic feet. The resulting six-syllable line is very short, and few poems are written entirely in this meter.

The 1948 poem "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke uses the trimeter:

...We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;

My mother's countenance

Could not unfrown itself.

William Blake's "Song ('I Love the Jocund Dance')" (1783) uses a loose iambic trimeter that sometimes incorporates additional weak syllables:

I love the jocund dance,

The softly breathing song,

Where innocent eyes do glance,

And where lisps the maiden's tongue.

I love the laughing gale,

I love the echoing hill,

Where mirth does never fail,

And the jolly swain laughs his fill.

The English iambic trimeter is much more frequently encountered as one-half of the common meter, which consists of alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter lines:

O God Our help in ages past

Our hope in years to come

our shelter from the stormy blast

And our eternal home

Isaac Watts, a paraphrase of Psalm 90," Our God, Our Help in Ages Past,

Another example, from the American poet Emily Dickinson:

If you were coming in the fall

I'd brush the summer by

With half a smile and half a spurn,

As housewives do a fly.

Emily Dickinson, "If You Were Coming in the Fall"